Coffee

Coffee is grown in Uganda.  Recently there has been a shortage of coffee in the open-air market.  As a result, the price has increased by 30% and the sellers have started selling by the half kilogram instead of by the kilogram.

Meta just checked the prices in the market across the border (in D.R. Congo).  Unlike the coffee in the Ugandan open-air market, the coffee in the Congo market is not ground yet.  However, it is possible to purchase (with Ugandan currency) two kilograms for slightly less than what one kilogram (ground) now costs in Uganda.  Uganda is going to price themselves out of the coffee market if this continues.

Planting season

It is an unusual sight traveling through the villages to reach Mugujai.  During the dry season some of the old plants are left in the ground until the soil is soft enough to till again.  The transition from the first to the second growing season is not set.  Some farmers are still waiting for the first crop to be ripe, while others have found theirs was ripe, have harvested, and planted again.

That’s what make now unique.  The old plants have been pulled out (everywhere) and burned along with the weeds, and the fields are either bare, or low – filled with young plants.  It is easy to see tookels and brick houses hundreds of meters away, usually hidden by corn (maze), sorghum, and a variety of other plants, and the surrounding countryside.

Economy

My friend Meta was offered a chance to purchase eight basins of cassava.  Cassava is a staple in the Kakwa diet.  It is a root that is dried in the sun and then ground into flour for cooking.  The price is stable right now because we have been in the dry season until now.  This means people have been able to harvest their cassava and dry it.  Later, when we are well into the wet season, when the ability to dry cassava has been difficult for some time, the price of cassava will go up.  Meta plans to buy his friend’s cassava now (so his friend has school fees for his children), and then sell it when cassava that has already been dried is fetching a higher price.

Delivery

Moses decided the chicken house in my compound need to be replaced.  Because he is the one that is using it, he took it upon himself to buy a new one.  However, it will need a thatch roof and you do not take old thatch off one shelter (no mater how small) and put it on another.

I arranged to buy a bundle of thatch through my friends in Mugujai.  Most of the thatch in this area comes from South Sudan and Mugujai is on the boarder.  They have neighbors in Mugujai who have fields in South Sudan.  Some are harvesting the long grass and importing it to sell in Uganda.  As a result, the price is better, and the bundle size is bigger in Mugujai.  The farther it moves into Uganda the more travel cost in the price, or the bundles are broken down into smaller sizes to make more money.

The children’s ministry has access to a vehicle this week and they have a meeting in Mugujai.  I asked if they would bring my bundle of thatch back on the roof of the vehicle.  I had planned to go up to the driver’s house in the evening of the day they returned, but I did not get the chance.  They came back early and delivered it to my house.  That is so Kakwa, just helping each other when they can.

Bananas

The Truth is Light held its monthly day of prayer at my house.  The agricultural missionary from Kenya used his break to look through my garden.  He noticed that my brother heart was beginning to produce fruit.  He also noticed that one of my banana trees had fruit that was beginning to spoil.  When I checked them last week none of them were ready for picking, so this was a surprise.

Sure enough, the bananas in the bunch at the top of the cluster had finally turned yellow and some of them have split.  All the bananas in the five bunches below them are green.  I have seen people selling whole stems (clusters) in the market where the entire cluster is ripe, but I can not manage to make that happen.  I get a few bananas at a time and I need to pick the stem while the rest are green to reach those above my head that are ripe (or spoiled in this case), and then let the rest ripen in the house.

G-nut

G-nut, ground nut, fulu, peanut, it is all the same.  It is a major crop of the second growing season.  (The rains are more frequent in the second half of the wet season.)  Moses tells me many of the other farmers did not plant g-nut this year because it is hard to break up the now dry and hard ground with a hoe to harvest it.  He is rejoicing today because his prayer yesterday was met with rain this morning.  Now it will be easier to dig and harvest his g-nuts.  He hopes to finish getting them out of the ground by tomorrow afternoon.  Then he, and his family need to shell them because they can sell them for a better price if they are shelled.

Cassava

Meta has been crossing the boarder into D.R. Congo for work lately.  He tells me he is weeding his cassava.  He is growing white cassava, which takes 1 ½ to 2 years to be ready for harvest.  Then the roots are dried, ground up into flour and used to make ilo, the dough like substance that is the base of most Kakwa meals.  Last year the price of cassava doubled, contributing to the food insecurity caused by the Russian / Ukraine war.  It also increased people’s interest in growing it. 

Unfortunately, a new weed has been discovered in the area.  This new weed is damaging the roots of the cassava.  This is why Meta wants to keep his cassava weeded.

Snake

That word, snake, brings different images and different thoughts to mind in different cultures.  I invite you to decide if they apply.

A young lady of 21 was working in her garden / farm across the border in the bush of South Sudan when she was bitten by a snake. *  She was bitten on both legs.  I was not told how she made it back across the border (which is a river at this point) to Mugujai.  The family (in this context family means all related persons) worked to find transport to take her to the nearest medical facility, a clinic in Busia, four Km away.  The person there treated her for some time; he was not optimistic.  He told the family to take her to the hospital and do your best, but I do not think she is going to make it.

Koboko hospital is an hour away under ideal conditions.  The dirt road has not been grated in over a year, so the conditions are far from ideal.  I am told they reached the hospital at 7 p.m. and she died at 10 p.m.  I am also told she was eight months pregnant.  At the hospital, she was holding herself in a way that the family thought she would hurt the baby.  She responded that she thought it was dead already.  I am told Koboko hospital has the means to support a baby taken from the mother under these conditions, but no effort was made to do so, leading me to believe they may have supported the mother’s thoughts.

The body was released to the family later that night, to be taken back to Mugujai for burial.

* Local custom is to cut back the bush and sweep the compound (including the bare dirt areas) clean.  This reduces the chance that a snake, or mosquitos will move in due to the lack of shade and bushy places to hide.  However, people farm / garden where they can find land not claimed by others, including in the bushy areas.

Hail

Two weeks ago a heavy rainstorm passed over Koboko.  The storm ended by giving us some hail before moving west to D.R. Congo.  I hear it did the same in D.R. Congo, except the storm stalled there.  As a result, they received a lot of hail, destroying a lot of the young plants of the second growing season.  Meta thought his Sukuma wiki (a type of ‘green’ like lettuce) survived.  Recently, he received word here in Koboko that it was destroyed by the hail and that he should come and replant the field.  He plans to plant eggplant and has started a nursery field here in Koboko.  He plans to replant the starts after he clears the field of the damaged plants.

Demonstration Garden

I visited Mugujai my first Monday back in Koboko district.  The computer skills class was not notified that I am back, and their meetings have been in the evening while I was gone because that was when one of my graduates was able to mentor them.

He is our agricultural missionary from Kenya.  He has been developing a demonstration garden so he can demonstrate other agricultural techniques and show that the land can produce more than the limited variety of crops common to the area.  He has been developing the farm (the terms farm and garden are used interchangeably here) for two years now.  As he enters the third year, I can really see the difference.

Livingstone leading a group on a tour of the demonstration garden